Bob Dole: “time, it is said, is the savior and nemesis of history. The savior because it is the very passage of time that creates…”

“time, it is said, is the savior and nemesis of history. The savior because it is the very passage of time that creates history. The nemesis because that same passage of time obliterates history. Today, in Nicodemus, KS, a community is waging a losing battle against time. To bolster them in that fight, I am introducing legislation that would establish Nicodemus, KS, as a national historic site. Kansas is not the first place that comes to mind when people think of the Civil War and reconstruction, but we Kansans know that Kansas is to the Civil War what Sarajevo was to World War I. Border ruffians, the sack of Lawrence, John Brown, and the Pottawatomie massacre are as familiar to Kansas schoolchildren as Fort Sumter and Gettysburg. The guerrilla war that rent bleeding Kansas was the opening skirmish in the armed conflict between abolitionist and slaveholder that ended at Appomattox. Even less well known is that out of that bitter struggle emerged a period of hope for the newly emancipated. During the 1870's, Kansas was the scene of a great migration of southern blacks seeking their fortune in what some African-American leaders described as the promised land. One of the most important settlements founded during that time was Nicodemus. From sod burrows carved out of the prairie by the original colonists, Nicodemus flourished into a leading center of black culture and society through the turn of the century.”